


Made With Adrenaline

by raisesomehale



Category: teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: #Oops, Amnesia, Loss of Identity, M/M, Magic, and if you don't, i was loathe to tag character names for this given the style i wrote it in, you'll understand once you read it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 03:51:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10267529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisesomehale/pseuds/raisesomehale
Summary: “Do you still have your name?”His face scrunches, “Do I stillhavemy name?” But - the words come out before he’s even considered the question. Instantly, he’s back in that edgeless cavern inside his head. He calls out for his name, but no noise leaves his lips.He doesn’t know it. He doesn’t know his name.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Whew! Where did this come from?? Sometimes you just have to indulge the crazy story ideas that come to you at 2am, riding the wave and watching where it takes you.
> 
> This is awfully unbeta'd, so all mistakes and inevitable punctuation errors are on me. Title comes from The Naked and Famous' song 'Higher' (my ultimate sterek anthem.) This was based very loosely on [this prompt.](http://writing-prompt-s.tumblr.com/post/155335277300/you-live-in-a-world-where-magic-exists-however)
> 
> As always, I shamelessly welcome feedback! Hope everyone enjoys♥

“Yo, dude.”  
  
The mans eyelids twitch, an absent flutter that sets off a deep and nasally inhale.  
  
“God, you could’ve told me you’d be passed out when I found you.”  
  
Before his mind has caught up his eyes open. He blinks, focusing his vision, performing a routine sweep of his surroundings. A little girl with tangly blonde hair is kneeling in front of him. He watches the pom-pom on the top of her beanie bobble as she talks.  
  
“Now I’m late for school. You said no bullshit!”

His eyebrows furrow. There’s a pressure in his head, the pulsing ghost of something forgotten that’s desperately trying to be remembered. He tries grasping for it and falls through air, and keeps falling. There’s nothing. No ledges of memory to catch his bearing on.

He can’t remember.

He can’t remember in the way that if remembering is a skill, a task to be performed, he’d never been taught how.

“Who are-“ he coughs abruptly, tongue dry. He decides to sit up instead of attempt speaking. His head throbs.

“C’mon, c’mon,” the little girl prods and quickly shoves her hand into her jacket, pulling out two white beads. No - not beads, orbs more like. They shimmer brilliantly, tinkling quietly like wind chimes and – he has to blink to make sure he’s seeing it right – orbiting slowly around one another in the center of her palm.

The girl watches him watch the orbs. When he looks blankly back up at her for an explanation, he sees something dark chase the ease off of her face.

“Oh…” she licks her lips and looks down, not meeting his gaze though moments before she had openly glared. “How many do you have left?”

He turns to regard the alley they’re in. If they’re not going to look at one another, he might as well scope out his location and see what he can gather on the situation. The alley is dingy and dark, and they’re seated so far back that the light coming from the street is a distant, slim strip of white.

“How many what?” His voice is weak and raspy dry. 

“Memories.”

He turns back. The girl’s watching him out of the corner of her eye, as if looking at him straight on is too grand a task.

Slowly, knowing the answer is _none,_ he says, "That’s an odd question.”

Just as odd: This seems to be answer enough for the girl. Her expression ignites into ravenous intrigue.

She blurts, “Do you still have your name?”

His face scrunches, “Do I still _have_ my name?” But - the words come out before he’s even considered the question. Instantly, he’s back in that edgeless cavern inside his head. He calls out for his name, but no noise leaves his lips.

He doesn’t know it. He doesn’t know his name.

“Maybe one of these is your name,” the little girl is saying, gazing down at the orbs still orbiting in her hand. 

He reaches for them. “What do you mean, is it written on -“

\-- the girl yanks them out of reach, her arm blurring from the speed. He gawks. She smirks.

“Cool huh?” Her grin grows impish. “Super-speed. Cost me my first Christmas.”

He blinks. Twice. “I don’t understand.”

The girl’s smug face drops. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. At least I’m smart enough not to trade my name," she grumbles. Then, as if realizing something, she carefully regards him. “What’d you get for it?”

“I—“

“Wait - you don’t remember,” she rolls her eyes and holds her hand out again, revealing the two orbs. With her second hand, she makes a grabby motion. When this fails to jolt him into action, the girl shakes herself. “Oh, right. Sorry, I’ve never met someone who didn’t know how to trade. I guess I can walk you through it… I’m not making it to school at this point anyway.”

The girl perches on the balls of her feet and tucks the orbs back in her pocket to free her hands, presenting her forearm for the man to see. As quickly as before, she sweeps her right hand along the her left forearm. Three golden, bead sized orbs awaken under her skin.

She points to the orb in the middle and excitingly says, “This one’s my speed! _Hey-_ “

He yanks her arm forward, eyes glued to the orbs. His chest is rising and falling, rising rising, rising-

“Whoa, hey – calm down –”

He remembers...

He drops the girl's arm and turns to his own. His hand shakes as he pushes his ratty, ripped sleeve up but when his palm aligns over his forearm, it calms and slowly begins to glide without command, as if the movement has been performed so many times, his body knows the way.

He lets it work.

And a cluster of orbs awaken under his touch, igniting the entire expanse of his arm into glowing, overwhelming light.

The girl’s gasp is a needle shot through glass. The shards clatter in the silence. If the alley were outer space, the man’s arm would be the sun.

Long moments pass before the girl speaks, “What. The. Shit. You have more than I have _ever_ seen _anyone_ have. Why the hell did you need one of mine?”

He manages to pull his gaze away from his forearm. The girl doesn’t. Momentarily, he’s more shocked by her cursing than his fluorescent light stick of an arm.

“What?”

The girl gestures vaguely, golden light reflecting in her eyes. “You know, I gave you an orb in exchange for your two memories. Oh, wait,” She digs around in her pockets, and once again brings out the two orbs. “I traded you immunity for them. Well, only the one at first. Then I got your other memory in the mail with a note saying you'd give me three orbs if I brought both of your memories back today.”

“I… traded you my…memories…for immunity.”

“Well, yeah. That’s how it works.” She holds out her forearm: “My first Christmas,” she points to the middle orb, her speed. Then her left, “The time I won the spelling bee. And this one,” the one on the right, “Was in exchange for the memory of the first seizure I had in class.” Her face scrunches. “I got green eyes for that one. Not very cool because the memory wasn’t special. The more precious the memory, the more powerful the orb,” she explains. “I can’t remember what immunity cost me…” Her fair eyebrows push forward by the slightest bit. “That can happen sometimes though, if you trade for a more powerful orb. I knew you were _crazy_ powerful when you couldn’t remember your name, but I didn’t expect _that_ ,” she gestures to his forearm wildly and huffs a single, tickled ‘ha.’ “I wouldn’t wanna cross you on a bad day- “

Before she can continue - “Immunity against what?” 

She makes an ‘I don’t know’ noise. “Everything?”

The idea that he was desperate enough to wager two of his memories - when he clearly had few to work with - in exchange for ‘immunity against everything’ did not bode well. His heart turns over in his chest, sharp enough to cut.

“You said I sent you a memory by mail after we traded for the first time,” his mind churns sluggishly. _What type of person makes a gamble like that?_ He thought to himself. _What if this little girl had decided to keep his memories, and to fuck with him?_ “How long ago was that?”

“I got the note, like, late yesterday? Only a few hours after we’d traded. That same day. Not gonna lie it was kinda weird, but I wasn’t about to pass up three orbs, so I came. Though you could've made it easier by actually coming to the meeting point instead of making me track your ass down to the lower border of the city,” she ends cooly.

He doesn’t imagine he ended up in this alleyway by choice, but decides not to push it.

His mind twists as he tries to make sense of it. He’s not sure why he’d trade all of his memories, but for whatever reason, he’d gone to skeevy lengths to make sure the two in the girl’s custody made their way back to him.

He needs to know what they are.

His gaze drops to his forearm. “Can you… Is it possible to see if your immunity is here… somewhere?”

At this, the little girl looks peeved. “It's not. I checked while you were out cold.” She makes an ‘I’m getting to it’ gesture in response to his confused face. “That’s what happens after you’ve homed an orb. Like acquired one, I mean. Your body can always recognize it, even when you don’t have it anymore.”

“I still don’t understand why you’d take _my_ memories. Why not just trade some of your own?

She makes a face like this suggestion is absurd. “Um, I’m 13.” A snort. “I don’t have as many valuable memories as someone older, like you. I mean, all I really have that's worth a lot is the memory of my parents. But that’s just stupid. Who trades their parents?”

He tries to recall his parents and realizes, stomach sinking, _I guess I would._

“And obviously my name could fetch a hefty price,” she continues with a nonchalant shrug, “But I don’t think I’d ever be able to trade that.”

The question, then, is how he was capable of that very thing.

His eyes lift to the memories in the little girl’s hand – _his memories_ , the two most important ones, it would seem. The only ones left.

He feels at once ravenous.

“Any three, you said?” When the little girl nods, he holds his forearm out. Like before, she stares in open awe. “Remind me how.”  
  
  
  
  
Once three of his orbs are successfully transferred to the little girl’s forearm, the man tips his head back, as he was instructed, and drops one of the two memories down his throat.

Images burst into the empty cavern inside his mind.

He watches his body walk through an abandoned building, sidestepping exposed pipes and crumbling pillars until he reaches a door. His hand turns a knob and in a concrete room, curled up on a clean mattress in the corner, is a young, unconscious man.

He realizes as he gets closer - though in the memory it isn't a surprise to him - that the man is shivering fiercely, his trembling body wracked with fever. Dull, sickly blue and green veins are visible through his skin. He’s wrapped snuggly in heavy wool blankets. The sight makes the present him, watching from a distance, uneasy, unsure. It makes the past him, living in the memory, sick with sorrow, a feeling so consuming that it left an edge on the memory, cutting into his throat on the way down.

_He collapses to his knees by the man’s bedside, hand shooting out to rest gently on his pulse point. It's almost undetectable._

_“Shit,” he hisses, a surge of adrenaline and dread lighting his insides to burning. “Shit, shit, shit.”_

_He goes for his sleeve. It rips under his hurried hand. In a few practiced moves he has his orbs lit and one in particular grasped in his palm. He can't hear himself over the roar in his ears._

_“Hey,” he says, voice wavering, hand shaking as he slides it around the man's neck to prop his head back. The man on the mattress makes a pained, nearly inaudible noise, and opens his eyes to slits. His fingers tighten on the clammy skin of the man’s neck. “Hey,” he repeats, softer, adoring, on the brink of breaking down. The man looks delirious with pain until, for a single, blindingly beautiful moment, his eyes light up with recognition, and he smiles._

_With incredible strain: “D-”_

_“Shh,” he interrupts, bringing their heads together, eyebrows furrowed; the only indication of his inner anguish. “Don't speak. Don't waste your energy,” and he lifts that single orb into view. Immunity._

_It's the only remaining thing they haven't tried in defense against this._

_He watches the man's expression, slow confusion morphing into refusal, when the closed door explodes inward, an infantry of armed men pouring into the room._

_He whips back to the man on the mattress with fire in his eyes, his hand holding the orb shooting up, reaching -_

The memory ends. He falls again into that endless emptiness. That couldn't be the end. His heart is beating in his throat, clawing, scraping -- he swallows the second for it to latch onto. It’s dragged down, and like the one before, it bursts into his mind in pure, crystallized clarity.

A word.

A name.

Every part of him begins to ache.

The little girl wiggles impatiently in front of him, shuffling the dirt beneath her. “…Was it your name?”

He can’t open his eyes. He feels like his throat would crumble if he spoke, but his mouth forms the single syllable; as if this, too, is muscle memory.

“Stiles.”   

“Aha! I knew it –”

He shakes his head, mind replaying those six letters over, and over, and over.

“It’s not my name,” he says. “It’s his.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://raisesomehale.tumblr.com)


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